Hold, Please by Richard Hester

Hold, Please by Richard Hester

A Broadway Stage Manager's pandemic memoir

March 12, 2020

Last night, after weeks of downplaying and ridiculing the virus, we were finally told by our President, that it is, in fact, serious...

And so, it began. Broadway shut down. Instead of sitting in a darkened theatre every night watching Jersey Boys, Richard Hester, like many other people, found himself sitting on his sofa glued to the news. As the days unfolded, turning into weeks, then months, he experienced the profound seismic shift of that tumultuous year. The virus spread, infecting millions. We lost friends and family. Our economies shut down. Our jobs either stopped or changed in radical ways. The senseless murder of George Floyd forced us to take a hard look at who we are and how we treat each other. The Presidential election, drove the country so far apart that it threatened to destroy Democracy, itself.

Hold, Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic chronicles it all from the particular point of view of a career Broadway stage manager living in Manhattan. Part journal, part blog, these essays attempted to make sense of the crisis and what it was doing to us. By the end, everything had changed. What follows is a journey through one of the most fascinating periods in both our cultural and our personal histories. Written with humor and compassion, Hold, Please provides a unique perspective on this time and delivers the most important lesson of all - Hope.